Verizon

Out & Equal Workplace Advocates is proud to display our ever-increasing list of corporations who support LGBT workplace equality by encouraging and fostering their own employee resource groups (ERGs). With such valuable workplace groups in place, employees in one ERG can turn to leaders in other groups to share resources and establish good workplace practices for LGBT employees. LGBT employees trust their employers are keeping their interests in mind when making key business decisions that affect all employees…

True Out & Equal Workplace Leaders

The following companies have already joined the Out & Equal ERG Registry:

Fox News and Wal-mart are among the high-level ($10,000) sponsors of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association’s (NLGJA) 2006 Convention in Miami (Sept 7-10 at Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel). Every year, the NLGJA garners hundreds of thousands of dollars in Big Media sponsorships for its convention; this year it appears (based on the sponsorship list below) that the total is around half a milliion dollars in corporate support.

The NLGJA bills itself as merely a professional organization for journalists who “happen to be gay,” as the liberal cliche goes. But the organization advocates a pro-homosexual “spinning” of the news not unlike the activist group GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. Note, for example, the NLGJA’s advice to the media regarding coverage of Lance Bass, the ‘N Sync band member who recently publicly revealed his homosexuality:

The term “gay” is the preferred adjective that has largely replaced “homosexual” in referring to men who are sexually and affectionally attracted to other men. “Homosexual” should be used only if “heterosexual” would be used in parallel constructions, such as in medical contexts.

Whether in headlines, teases, or body copy, try to avoid using forms of the word “admit,” which is typically used in the context of something shameful or illegal. Some examples of less potentially charged words are “announce,” “disclose” and “say.”

While it is true that the “mainstream” (read: dominant liberal) media is so pro-homosexuality these days that it is hard to discern between media activism and plain old homosexual-group activism, that does not make it right. The media should play it down the middle on homosexuality and other controversial issues, not serve as a cheerleader for the “gay rights” cause.

How appropriate is it to quote interviewees whose ideas could be considered homophobic?… Certainly, news organizations have written extensively about white supremacists and other hate groups. For instance, in October we saw a flurry of stories about 13-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede, who use entertainment to promote the supremacist movement (“Young singers spread racist hate,” said a headline on the ABC News Web site). But I doubt that any journalist is adding them to a source contact list for bringing “balance” to future stories about reparations, interracial marriage, the Holocaust or immigration. That same ethic needs to extend to LGBT coverage, too.

Although not all NLGJA members may share Hegedus’ view on this, clearly the NLGJA is an activist organization with a strong institutional bias against those espousing traditionalist views on homosexuality.

Our question for Fox News executives is: if you are truly “fair and balanced,” will you now give an equal and corresponding grant to Americans for Truth or another pro-family organization, say, Accuracy in Media, that counters the ubiquitous pro-“gay” spin in the media? We’ll be awaiting your answer.

The following are corporate sponsors for this year’s NLGJA conference in Miami: “Groundbreaker Level” – $35,000

…The July 29 parade lasted over three hours and included 185 contingents. Many entries featured scantily clad participants, mostly men, gyrating suggestively to loud, throbbing music. Float titles included “In Dmood for Decadence.” Simulated sex acts were performed in several entries, and many advertised gay bars, pornography vendors, and male prostitution businesses. A rider in the Rentboy.com convertible flashed the devil sign with his hand. Handouts to parade spectators included condoms, sexual lubricant samples, and literature promoting a pornographic web site. Numerous trash receptacles bearing the slogan “Got lube?” (advertising an anal sex lubricant) were placed along the parade route and in the festival venue inside Balboa Park.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag queen group in outlandish outfits parodying Catholic women religious, carried an “Asylum of the Tortured Heart” banner, mocking Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At the Gay Pride festival, they provided crowd control and received an award for the “most outrageous contingent.”

A woman who was topless except for pasties walked alongside the parade. A man wearing a body thong covering only his genitals roller-skated by parade watchers in defiance of municipal code which prohibits nudity on public lands and defines it as being “devoid of an opaque covering which covers the genitals, pubic hair, buttocks, perineum, anus or anal region of any person, or any portion of the breast at or below the areola thereof of any female person.”

…Several law enforcement and government agencies participated in the parade or had a booth at the festival, including San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne, San Diego County Sheriff Bill Kolender, the San Diego Fire Department, the Chula Vista Police Department, the Oceanside Police Department, the Harbor Police, and the San Diego Regional Airport Authority.

…Participating churches and synagogues included All Saints Parish and Saint John the Beloved Cathedral of the Catholic Church of America (not affiliated with the true Catholic Church); Dignity, another group using the Catholic label but not sanctioned by the Catholic Church; Christ Chapel of North Park; Saint Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral; Pilgrim United Church of Christ in Carlsbad; Temple Emanu-El and the Metropolitan Community Church, founded by a homosexual “leatherman.” Participating schools included San Diego State University, UCSD, Cal State University San Marcos, and the San Diego Cooperative Charter School.